Hotels.com—a brand built on irreverent comedy—needed a PR-worthy creative idea that would expand their brand into the content space, while promoting their offer of “Stay 10 Nights, Get an 11th Night Free.”

Hotels are an essential part of any touring stand-up comedian’s life on the road, and Hotels.comedy, as a platform, was the perfect answer to Hotels.com’s content needs. It’s repeatable, fun and vast enough to encapsulate an upcoming wide range of content ideas.

For this first chapter, we knew Jonathon Van Ness (a “Queer Eye” star who recently entered the public eye), was attempting to launch his stand-up career. It’s not often a star makes this kind of lateral career leap, attempting to develop an entirely new skillset once they’ve already become famous. And we were convinced that this story deserved telling.

To help Jonathan achieve his goals, we arranged a nationwide comedy tour—"10 Nights with Jonathan Van Ness”—and followed him with a camera crew, every step of the way, to give his fans a look into his personal life and his quest to stand up or cry trying.

Highlight Hotels.com’s offer—Stay 10 Nights, Get an 11th Night Free—in a way that felt like entertainment, not interruption. You’ll notice that “10 Nights with Jonathan Van Ness,” couples perfectly with that “Stay 10 Nights,” deal.

First, we planned and coordinated Jonathan’s comedy tour, and got a small production crew on the ground in every single city he traveled to. The 10-Night tour across Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Kansas City, New York and Washington, DC lasted two months, and we were live-editing footage during the entire tour to meet our production deadlines.

In the end, we created four 5-6 minute episodes, and aired the first at an exclusive launch event in New York—which Jonathan Van Ness himself attended. The four episodes were released on YouTube over the course of two weeks, and were supported by a series of promoted social posts across Hotels.com and Jonathan’s platforms.

Over 500 million PR impressions and social media impressions. Over 8.6 million views across the four videos—with a video completion rate of over 40% (staggering for videos that are all between 5-6 minutes long).